August 26, 2002

Singaporeans to ask what they can do for their country ... or else

Eric Ellis  Singapore

THE German poet Berthold Brecht once observed it wasn't that the people had lost faith in their government, but that the government had lost confidence in the people

Brecht's ironic musing was after the former East Germany had brutally crushed a workers rebellion, but the notion seems to have been taken literally by Singapore's famously authoritarian Government, which is questioning the loyalty of its 4million citizens

 "Look yourself in the mirror and ask: Am I a fair-weather Singaporean or an all-weather Singaporean?" Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong put to Singaporeans during his recent National Day speech. "Am I a stayer or a quitter?"

"The more the Government provides for Singaporeans, the higher their expectations of what the Government should do ... the more they gain from subsidised HDB (public) housing, the more money they have to buy cheaper houses in Australia," Mr Goh railed.

"And," he taunted, "Australia might be cheaper than Singapore, but which other country will they run off to next, when bus fares go up in Australia?"

Mr Goh's impatience with his voters goes to the heart of a pressing problem - how to keep its citizens in a Singapore struggling out of the deepest recession in its 37-year independent history. Under the tutelage of Mr Goh's predecessor, Lee Kuan Yew, Singaporeans have emerged as some of the world's richest people, albeit in one of the planet's most controlled systems

Singapore's unofficial "social contract" provides that Singaporeans accept the strictures their Government makes on them - no political plurality and a government-controlled media are just two of them - for economic prosperity.

But with the recent recession, record unemployment and a renewed crackdown on dissidents, Singaporeans are contemplating a more liberal future abroad. Recent letters to a newspaper from younger Singaporeans enraged Mr Goh when he read that rather than fight for Singapore, they would "run at the drop of a hat" or felt "no sense of belonging here".

The Government has responded with a typical carrot-and-stick approach. Mr Goh's admonishment is the stick but a vigorous attempt to reinvent Singapore as an arts centre and thus make it a more interesting place provides the carrot

Central to this is a huge waterfront concert hall, which the Government believes will rival the Sydney Opera House. Various philharmonic orchestras are to perform at the centre, dubbed the "Big Durian" by locals after the smelly but much-loved tropical fruit.

And to counter the lingering sterile image of a country that once exhorted its citizenry "let's have spontaneous fun", the Government has hinted it will allow dancing on bar-tops. Graffiti is also officially now considered an art form, although the lifting of that restriction came too late for American teenager Michael Fay, who was infamously caned in 1994 for spray-painting cars.

Singapore's media has also been consumed by a vigorous debate as to whether Singapore is "funky" or not - but as one Singaporean wryly noted, if you have to ask, clearly you're not.